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Dave King: I'm not leaving Scotland until I come up with a game plan for Rangers future

Dave King: I'm not leaving Scotland until I come up with a game plan for Rangers future

Former Rangers director Dave King will fly in from South Africa next week and not leave Scotland until he comes up with a "definite game plan" for the future of the Ibrox club.

The South Africa-based businessman urged supporters last week to withhold season-ticket money and hand it over to the club on a game-by-game basis amid growing concerns about the League One leaders' finances and governance.

The 58-year-old Glaswegian, who invested £20m in the club before it was consigned to liquidation in June 2012, made his plea to the fans after Rangers confirmed it had accepted £1.5million in loans from shareholders Sandy Easdale and Laxey Partners

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King accepted an invitation to meet the Rangers board after an open letter from chairman David Somers claimed his "statements and innuendos" were "very damaging to the club" although he mocked the tone of the letter, saying he was being "summoned" to explain his comments.

Safe in the knowledge he has the backing by the influential Union of Fans coalition, King will first jet into London to meet with investors in the club before travelling to Glasgow where, aside from his showdown with the Ibrox board, he will also meet supporters to find a way forward for the Govan club.

"I will now meet the board as requested," King told Sky Sports News. "I will visit the institutions in London next week and put a schedule together with some of the existing shareholders to understand where they are and how they would feel about a rights issue.

"Also, whether they would participate, whether they would give the rights to someone like me and I would like that out of the way before I meet the fans.

"Then I will stay up in Scotland for as long as it takes until we have a definite game plan as to how we will go forward from there."

Rangers' former finance director, Brian Stockbridge, claimed last October that the Ibrox club would only have around £1million of its cash reserves left by April but chief executive Graham Wallace has been at pains in recent days and weeks to deny there is a risk of a second administration.

King claims the Ibrox board were fully aware of their financial predicament when they refused his offer of help towards the end of last year.

He said: "I said then 'it's now early enough to anticipate you will not make the end of the year on your current cash balances and let's now try, and in an orderly fashion, go about a new fund-raising exercise'.

"I was happy to be a significant investor, in fact a leader of a consortium putting new funds into the club with the only condition that the funds went into the club.

"I wasn't interested in taking on existing shareholders and buying their shares out.

"I was looking for a new share issue and for those funds to go into the club and into the team and really all that's happened is they have adopted a 'Nero fiddling while Rome burns' approach where the inevitability of the next couple of months has come to pass.

"The board has done nothing, has not been transparent at all with regard to the finance and we now know as a matter of fact that the club has run out of funds and is trying to shuffle on in the hope that the fans will once again come to their rescue.

"They are looking for them to give enough money for season tickets so they can continue for another couple of months before again ending up in another financial crisis. That is what I am trying to avert at this point.

"The board has said my intentions are nothing other than damaging but in fact the opposite is true. The board should go to the fans and say 'this is the true state of the position at this club'."

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